


Warm places in the snow

by a_term



Category: Soul Calibur
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Teasing, Trains, Victorian era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 19:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_term/pseuds/a_term
Summary: Crossing Siberia is an interesting trip, and like with every trip you can make new friends or find old ones again.





	Warm places in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> Since Amy being Viola crossed the border of the obvious to the confirmed, there's no harm in dying her hair back to red, is there?

The Trans-Siberian railway was not yet finished but traffic travelled across it, not only workers, supplies, materials, regular passengers and trade but also rolling hotels modelled after the Orient Express to comfortably shuttle nobles to and from the railheads so they could see modernisation finally reach the inner voids of the Russian Empire. The central gap still had to be bridged the old way but Lady Valentine had more adventurous spirit than required to do just that and had sought out a few families of Russian firebirds in their natural habitat. In her expert opinion they were adorable monogamous raptorial songbirds gifted with the abilities to breathe fire and to bestow good luck. As she had always found herself lacking in that last department, she had made sure to peacefully acquire a few of their feathers and made a handful of sketches.

Upon reaching the eastern railhead she found a throng of hard-working labourers, prisoners and guards supervised by a hard-gawking count and countess. They were to be on the luxury train to Vladivostok along with an Italian painter, a few high ranking members of the imperial engineers, an older widow and her younger boy-toy and to cap it all there was a moustachioed Belgian Detective, ever a bad omen. Once on board, she caught glimpse of a suspiciously familiar redheaded woman, highly reminiscent of someone met long ago and would add a little something to the probable murder mystery.

After a quick inquiry with the train's staff, the mystery woman turned out to be Aimée Larousse, a French chemist, much like Isabella, and also something of a mage, again much like Isabella. It was hardly an uncommon thing in the field given its connections to the considerably riskier and less predictable field of alchemy. She was whisper-thin, knife-sharp, deathly pale and quite absorbed in her books.

Isabella was quite certain she hadn't been noticed by her yet and by the last day of the trip had decided to have a little chat with her late at night. The cold had driven staff and patrons alike to desert the tea room in favour of warm beds but both women seemed to be quite unaffected, nothing abnormal for a fusion of alchemy and demonic corruption or what she strongly suspected of being a particularly sane vampire. Looking at her more closely, she was rather tall, almost tall enough to stand up all the way to Isabella's shoulders. Her dress displayed her elegantly slim curves quite perfectly and the high waist allowed one to imagine the long, shapely legs quite easily. Further up her perfect oval face could have belonged to a porcelain doll, she had blood-red lips, large red eyes and curly red hair pulled in a tight ponytail high over the nape of her neck.

"Good evening, young lady."

The possibly quite old lady looked up and, to her credit managed to keep a perfectly neutral expression, sadly her control didn't extend to her complexion. She managed to reach within a few shades of scarlet before she slowly switched to green, it took her a few more seconds to realise she was staring and she managed very decent pure white, well aided by her natural complexion but somewhat marred by the sheen of cold sweat, she then oscillated between all three with gusto before settling her gaze further down and adopting a particularly deep crimson. Then her eyes snapped up again.

"Good evening, I don't believe we've had the pleasure of being introduced," she said, deadpan.

"We'll have more than enough time to do that later, I have a most English craving for tea and the staff has fled, then I noticed you still have some."

"I'm afraid I told them I wouldn't take long and I had them store away everything else."

"A pity," said Isabella, she picked a seat and draped herself over it, the polar opposite of Aimée's very proper sitting technique which wouldn't have looked out of place in a German opera house, the very picture of _S_ _itzfleisch_ , "Have you seen those poor guards' bayonets the other day, so awkward and so long, their sheaths were dragging through the snow."

The redhead saw some escape and found it in her to no long try to camouflage herself as her hair. "I have, the race to longer and longer bayonets has stopped being funny and borders on the embarrassing now, everyone sticks to cheap steel and so have to make odd compromises, that fat cross-section is an abomination. And blunt as a ball."

"So eager to receive charging horses that they can't even slice vegetables anymore. And a complete lack of balance in the blade. The marvellous march of progress in the art of slaughtering others."

"At least sometimes they do manage to get better at it. You are English, yes? Have you heard of the aim correction computers? Marvellous little things, merely the size of a diner table, I have heard some of their makers promise to make aiming as easy as sighting. And shooting at sea had always been such a tricky proposition past a hundred meters or so."

Isabella nodded knowingly, she had enough practical experience in suffering from that problem. Aimée's large, wine-red eyes showed a hint of mischief, as she closed her book and pressed its top edge against her lips.

"I heard that they are almost worth dealing with that secretive inventor they have, that quite abrasive Mister Pollen."

The most graceful Lady Valentine closed her eyes for a moment and composed herself. It was going to be _that_ sort of discussion. Well, she also had quite a repertoire. She could also use the pause to cast a little spell to verify a certain hypothesis.

"They are less than pleasant but they do get something done. I hear the Jeune Ecole and the Vielle Ecole are still managing to not achieve much except making French naval design quite, well, schizophrenic."

"Oh, shifting requirements with each government, you know how it is. Those eventually leave, unlike pests embedded in the service. There's that rising star you have, a certain David Beatty?"

Isabella twisted her mouth, the most dashing Beatty did, in fact, have a few of the markings of a pest. For a start he was a bit of a glory hound and… The spell came back and didn't really tell her much.

"Bold, arrogant," said Aimée, seizing the initiative she had dangled in front of her sparring partner, "and wrong. I get the feeling that someday he'll forget something important, like his orders, or training his crews, or giving orders, or even how his ships are designed to fight."

It was hard but Isabella had to admit that Aimée had talked some measure of truth. It was time retaliate. It clearly wasn't because she felt the Frenchwoman score a point, it was strictly because the sting of her words would mask the touch of her magic, slightly stronger this time.

"Well, at least his ships will look glorious instead of being pudgy pillboxes."

"That's all the charm of the Marine Nationale though. That procession of little castles build on fat turtles is the pinnacle of elegance as recognised by all those of good taste."

Aimée twisted her mouth, clearly unhappy with her improbably imaginative explanation. The gentle probe returned a clear verdict of vampirism, astral power and a hint of some unwholesome energies that Isabella knew only too well.

"It's to protect against boarding, since, I'm sure you know, armour-piercing shells haven't been quite perfected," she accompanied this with a movement of her hands and added, "Well, at least we don't have to deal with Ethel Beatty, it was amazingly nice of them, to get married and inflict themselves to each other and spare the world from having to deal too much with them."

"Sadly they don't tend to stick together all that well, they are marriage wreckers with an understanding of sorts. And on the delicious subject of awful people, that poor emperor of yours, stabbed by his own generals or so I heard? Poor, poor man."

Aimée's face showed a satisfied smile for a moment before frowning, as if unused to such an expression.

"No one ever proved anything, besides those generals managed to salvage that entire situation rather well, getting from the siege of Paris to a status quo ante bellum wasn't the outcome the world expected. As for that poor, poor emperor, he was trying so hard to be his uncle that instead of being the farce to his tragedy, he managed to be both. Fits with calling himself the third."

"They still needed a few failures of the Prussian artillery corps to not make their ammunition depots explode and even then a little Jeanne D'Arc to harass, cajole, threaten and then finally bribe a cavalry squadron to go with her on a little ride around the Prussians to their headquarters."

"The longer they blame sabotage, the longer they don't improve storage methods. And at least that little heroine didn't end up as the English's first contact with cooking. It had quite a silver lining but sadly they forgot it immediately and went back to boiling everything."

"Even then they had a bit of trouble, some have pointed towards a form of graduation celebration?"

Isabella smiled, she knew perfectly where she was going. A tiny bubble of magic danced for an instant before her eyes.

"You don't need to tell me, syphilis is a burden on the body and mind alike, and the newly commissioned officers went to a bordello known to be a hotspot of _le mal des anglais_."

Isabella pouted, it was such an uncouth way of putting it. The way the magic had made the amalgam she called her blood react was also quite uncouth.

"But," resumed Aimée, "At the very least, they kept their decision making skills and even dared to use them once in a while. Definitely better than what one could call, ah, Post-Nelsonian Thought. Apparently deliberately and knowingly obeying an order to ram your commanding officer's ship is better than asking the good admiral if he is quite sure. Poor Queen Victoria, having to see her namesake slip beneath the waves because asking questions is difficult. A battleship sent to the bottom of the sea and seven hundred dead."

"Three hundred and fifty." Corrected Isabella.

"You are right, it is a much more acceptable number. It was, in fact, so acceptable that the admiralty decided that there was no guilt, fault or responsibility, they were afraid that people might start questioning orders after a glorious example of an incident where people should have. 'Now we shall see something interesting' indeed!"

"They have strange ways of worshipping Nelson. I trust it was quite entertaining for you and it's a shame it's over," said Isabella. She smiled, pleased with her prepared and quite obvious counter-attack, "Thankfully we have other scandals to keep you warm and entertained. I understand the Dreyfus affair is somehow still not over, a whole decade of nothing but magic."

Isabella did her best to both look smug and not look too smug and performed admirably at accomplishing the former while failing completely at the latter. Aimée pursed her lips, frowned, stred in her empty teacup, opened her mouth and did her best impression of a boiling kettle, then kept doing so. She took her time to finally boil dry and then started cursing hard enough to make a sergeant blush. Then a titanic sigh. She finally raised her gaze towards Isabella, her eyes were again the large, deep, wine-red, mournful and quite hypnotic eyes she had seen so long ago. She finally composed herself and forced an expression of disgust on face.

"I hate them, I hate them so much, bloated with hubris and honour that they can't… That they can't do anything right," her expression softened, "I hate having to go behind their back and salvage everything. And I suspect you do as well, yours are similar, they all are. Egotism and bluster and incompetence as far as the eye can see. They cheer on the most obvious mistake and whine at the slightest compromise to their money or comfort. Just look at that William the second, he went from a horrible demagogue to a glorious leader when he started caring less for his people and more for destabilising all of Europe. And starting a naval arms race with England because he likes boats."

She paused to take a breath.

"All this nationalism is getting a bit awkward these days, we don't even have much to be proud of." She said with a sigh.

"Well, Haussmann has done a good job with Paris. And the metric system is quite useful?"

"That's a lot of comfort to the hundreds of thousands of deprived living around the place. Still better than London. But I guess England rules a quarter of the globe. Poorly, fragmented in a thousand fiefdoms, with little skill and no coordination. Our world is still a rickety teetering death-trap." She sighed again. "Good evening Lady Valentine, it has been too long. What may I do for you?"

"Sit and have a chat. I'm quite impressed by the way, there's no coffin full of soil to be seen and you don't even call yourself Yma."

The dreaded vampire Yma let out a falsely-indignant huff.

"Bram Stoker never interviewed me and should stick to writing action about high tech toys. He's part of why I have to mop up so many young and clueless idiots who think they have to drink blood to live."

"So what do you drink it for?" said Isabella with a smile.

Aimée pressed one of her fangs against a blood-red lip.

"Entertainment."

"How delightful."

"It is indeed. I'm amazed you don't have a couple carapace-covered limbs and a few large extra eyes in various places."

"Likewise, all that demonic corruption has left me surprisingly stable."

Aimée turned towards the swirling snow and darkness outside and gave her reflection a wan smile.

"I am glad to see you, I hadn't seen another not-quite immortal in quite a while, not since I've found a place for Raphael somewhere in the Swiss Alps where he can just paint away his madness away from that of the world."

"You didn't really seek any out, did you? Never spared a thought for the mystic chemist operating out of London with the initials I.V?"

Aimée's eyes opened wide in surprise and her lips twitched into a pout.

"I never thought to read those letters the English way, always in the French way. I never noticed they were your initials in the first place. I may be a little bit stupid, I apologize."

She took a long, shaky breath.

"And it is true that I didn't seek anyone out, I would love to find someone to agree with me and tell me I have done well but my life has been, well, a mess. I've changed a lot, both in myself and in the course of history, but I'll remain an idiot that caused a lot of damage. I don't want anyone to rub it in my face."

"I'd have trouble doing so, considering my own history," said Isabella, then she started looking for a lighter subject, "What led you to doing so much chemistry? Chlorine and fluorine are not easy to work with and hardly the most entertaining elements around."

"Someone showed me how useful alchemy could be," replied Aimée, grateful for the escape, "I've tried to acquire some of those skills. Of course, necromancy and astral magic remain my mainstays but I am happy with what I've learned and those years of work are paying larger dividends now."

"Speaking of chemistry, a subject I was studying showed some adorable colorations when she finally spotted me."

Aimée erupted in a collection of babbling explanations, you understand, she was surprised, and astonished. It was a not a situation she had been expecting and she had frozen, unable to think about her next course of action. Evidently, the phase change to a solid crystal led vampires to acquire a lovely crimson colour as Aimée was clearly demonstrating for Isabella's benefit. Not that any of those explanations were false but there was, perhaps, a small lie by omission.

"My dear, I am not a nun and no one will ever accuse me of being a prude," said the world's most worldly alchemist as she stood up from her seat and sat on the couch in the heavy vapours that had once been a very cool woman's composure, "You can tell me anything you want, try your best to shock me." She gently took hold of Aimée's hands in hers, the no longer so young woman was still clutching her mystery novel, and caressed her though both pairs of gloves. The touch seemed burning hot but while the gloves were thin enough to comfortable turn pages, Isabella thought safer to assume the heat was only in her head.

"You are quite striking, you have an… improbable figure. I found hard to detach my eyes from you centuries ago and when I saw you I thought back to that time. I envied you and your powers and I still do to this day."

"Was it really nothing but envy for my profile?"

"Don't tell me about it, remarkable enough to be seen from behind."

The redhead lost some of her colour and seemed to develop a… cold sweat? Her ears were still burning bright red however.

"For centuries, I didn't know if I wanted to be you or… to be with you."

Isabella raise a hand to gentle cradle Aimée's face and watched the vampire nuzzle into her palm.

"Wonderful, honesty feels good, doesn't it? It wasn't that hard after all."

"Thank you."

It was time for blue eyes to open wide in surprise.

"What for?"

"For now, just existing."

Isabella responded by just gentle resting her forehead against the quite heated vampire's temple. She felt wonderful, a similarly flawed mess with whom she could while away the centuries. Then a noise caught both their attentions over the noise of the train and they both snapped in far more innocent poses.

"Do the electric lights at Lord Salisbury's estate still explode when it rains too much?"

"I do think they fixed that, even for such a great lover of progress that was a bit much, may he rest in peace."

The door at the far end of the wagon had opened, letting in the Belgian detective. Both women turned towards the intruder.

"Forgive me young ladies, I have merely looking for the staff, with this cold I ended up retiring early and now I am, if anything, too well-rested. I'd kill for a nice cup of chocolate. Did I interrupt-" he was cut off by a high pitched scream from some distance behind him. All three winced in the same instant. As they all started running towards the commotion the man started bemoaning his fate, "Would you believe I just wanted a quiet trip to see Japan?"


End file.
